isaac
Charles JohnsonControversial opinion: blogs were actually good and the shit that replaced them sucks
JL Roberson@Green_Footballs I keep meaning to restart mine and try to remember how easy it once was, when it felt compulsive
https://jlroberson.blogspot.com/
scribandotcom@Green_Footballs Honestly don't think a microblogging aggregator *capability* is a bad idea, but it would have been far better for bloggers to use their blogs as the home for all their writing, while having aggregator servers based on an ActivityPub-like protocol allow for reading and discovery.
john r red-horse@jrredho @Green_Footballs It definitely was a good start. RIP.
dingodog@Green_Footballs but blogs have sooooo many characters and the writer expects you to read them ALL honestly it's all so taxing I can't even
Facundo Olano@Green_Footballs I miss forums
Slyphic@facundoolano @Green_Footballs
There's a few out there still active and quite good. Honest to god, the Something Awful forums are excellent.
And as for blogs, I've been collecting alternative scifi wargaming blogs for years, and my RSS reader has a half dozen blogposts I want to read every single day. Now, that's out of 200+ links, but still. The problem is down to how terrible Google has become, combined with social media algos designed to steer you away from the open internet.
Controversialer opinion: Usenet was better than both. (Bring back killfiles.)
Mark Dixon@jrredho @Green_Footballs Loved Usenet. And it’s still there. If enough folks go adopt old groups it come back to life too.
Ha! Yeah, it's still there. In fairness, I haven't looked to try it in more years than I'd like to say. :)
And what ever happened to trn? It's not even listed as a newsreader in the Wikipedia page for "List of Usenet newsreaders" page.
This just started me down a rabbit hole. :)
Fun fact: FreeBSD still have an up-to-date version of trn available via their Freeports repo.
Peter aka spezbabyYup, I'm here for a resurgent Usenet
oceaniceternity@Green_Footballs how is that controversial? I feel like all of us are here because we miss blogs.
Rufus J. Cooter@Green_Footballs Agree! Tho' I think that a big part of their downfall was the lack of a plan for how to do comment moderation, which (for a while) big social managed to trick folk into believing was a problem they had solved
Ryan B. Anderson@RufusJCooter @Green_Footballs yes—there was a point where any stopped commenting on blogs and commentary about them shifted to Twitter etc. then everything shifted there.
@anthropologia @Green_Footballs Which made sense, at the time!
For me, the "Golden Age of Blogging" was when Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog was in full swing, but smiting the trolls turned into a full-time job, and then two full-time jobs, and then he largely abandoned the blog for twitter, and then abandoned twitter as it became another full-time job just to deal with the trolls
It's almost like there's a pattern here
Kcgadiyar@Green_Footballs I agree. So many blogs I used to follow just stopped once Twitter became a thing.
Christos Argyropoulos MD, PhD@Kcgadiyar @Green_Footballs I started using Twitter, among other things, to direct traffic to the blog and then stopped blogging.
🦋ShouldbeWriting🦋@Green_Footballs I always remember that my group of friends got split up online when half took to Facebook and the other half to Twitter (and now we're more split than ever). What I usually forget is that we all used to talk to each other on Livejournal.
Null@Green_Footballs I mean, most blogs were absolute trash, but they were probably better for us. A healthier way to engage.
חנן כהן • Hanan CohenJust before the rising of social networks I taught technology to social change organizations and of course taught them how to open and write blogs.
They asked me "but how people will know about our blogs?" and my answer was "they eventually will find them" and I felt it wasn't a very good answer.
And then came Facebook (which I hate) and solved the problem.
The problem with social networks is that they are solving real problems (while bringing other new problems).
madonline@Green_Footballs Pre-2013 internet was better in almost every way
@Green_Footballs Very little in social media has ascended to the level that was often reached on The Poor Man, or Fafblog.
There is literally a handful of blogs that I check almost daily.
Otherwise, I catch up on the news here.
Irina@Green_Footballs What's controversial about that?
Resolviendo la incógnita 🌐
Michael@Green_Footballs Another (not so much?) controversial opinion: XMPP with OTR was better than anything else we're forced to use now.
Lucy 
MOVED@Green_Footballs yet here you are on a microblogging network, using an instance with one of the lowest character limits
BroWren@Green_Footballs RSS > all
J Wolfgang Goerlich
Seth Rutledge@Green_Footballs That's controversial? I thought it was pretty common knowledge :)
ArcStrider@Green_Footballs I am slowly becoming a straight up RETVRN guy for LiveJournal
(Do not RETVRN to the actual LiveJournal, which is owned by the FSB now)
LisPi@Strider @Green_Footballs The code has been forked & hosted by others (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveJournal#Other_sites_running_the_LiveJournal_engine), those may be adequate.
Nico 
@Green_Footballs I was never in danger of having the blog read!
Ulises@Green_Footballs waiting for twitter to turn into MySpace page with crazy customization
Matthew 
@ulioterojr
That ain't gonna happen even though someone trying to recreate MySpace sounds cool
@Green_Footballs
That ain't gonna happen even though someone trying to recreate MySpace sounds cool
@Green_Footballs
PRMA@Green_Footballs I have started using kagi recently which shows a ton more blogpost than all the other search engines. and my life has just improved a thousand fold.
Claudia Dias@Green_Footballs and now if you have a blog it will be raw material for AI engines. Can't win.
Bryan Alexander
spherulitic@Green_Footballs livejournal had more quality discussions and communities than anything since
LuisLasbelin 🌺@Green_Footballs sometimes I still find myself in an old blog looking for answers
ch0ccyra1n is leaving fedi soon@Green_Footballs Medium might be the worst of those replacements. I hate going there and I hate it when people post links to that dreadful site 
Lawler Hix 
@Green_Footballs this is controversial? :p
Sphinx of Black QuartzLook, I know it takes somebody incredibly brave and strong and, dare I say it, heroic to say the thing I'm about to say, but: You're absolutely right.
Philippe Jadin@Green_Footballs not controversial at all IMHO 🥸
Josh Clancy@Green_Footballs Checkout midflip.org <- brand new social platform trying to get back to that.
Daniel M Karlsson
Antranig Vartanian 
@Green_Footballs if that’s controversial then I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
meduz'@Green_Footballs That’s not a controversial opinion. And same with forums.
JellyOsaurus@Green_Footballs twitter is a microblogging platform.
so we literally went from blogging to microblogging because people are just too lazy to type paragraphs worth of posts.
sad isnt it?
Matti Redsky@jellyosaurus @Green_Footballs Microblogging is okay when the ideas are actually micro (e.g., shitposting). The problem is that people will be like "in this essay I will... (45 post thread later)" and never once stopped to think "Hm, maybe this would be better as a long form item."
ouchthats@Green_Footballs I thought basically everyone who remembers the blog era more or less agrees. But I don't think the spam-in-blog-comments problem ever really got solved; as I remember it, that was one of the driving forces away from blogs. I'd guess a straight return to the old ways might find it's got worse in the meantime!
Pedro Machado Santa
cleanthes@Green_Footballs blogs are still good
GeddyLeeRoth@Green_Footballs Forums as well. IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Joblo. It all went to shit with Trump and MAGAts.